MP rating site is 'wicked': Socialist minister

A French minister has criticised a website rating MPs’ performance across the country, calling it "dangerous" and "wicked".

Alain Vidalies, 62, the Minister for Parliamentary Relations, said the website NosDéputés.fr (Our MPs) causes ministers to work harder, which in turn slows down the parliamentary process.

The website, which was established in 2009, measures the ministers’ activity - making available for each MP information on trips to the National Assembly, questions they asked there and the number of new laws defended.

Vidalies claims the quantification of a minister’s work has put a “considerable amount” of pressure on the Assembly.

“Today, in the Assembly, we have seen up to 30 MPs coming up, one after the other, to defend exactly the same thing, and only to top up their counter [on the website]!” he said in a speech made during the Socialist Party summer conference in La Rochelle last weekend.

Tangui Morlier, the founder of the group behind the website, Regards Citoyens, said: “There has not been an increase in the number of interventions in the Assembly. There is a new generation of MPs who are trying to use the internet to raise their figures, but it’s still marginal.

“Our site's aim is to give credit to those ministers who don’t get much media coverage, who stay on the benches of the National Assembly until 2am to defend an amendment.”

The website founders and Vidalies are due to meet next week to talk through the website and its effects on parliament. Morlier said she is “ready to modify the website if need be.”

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